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[–] 9 points 2 months ago* (10 children)

While learning Spanish I've noticed that my native language (Portuguese) is really weird sometimes.

Like, "I am hungry" is "tengo hambre" in Spanish (trans. "I have hunger"), but in my language it's "estou com fome" which literally translates to "I am with hungry".

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    In Korean it's paegopa, which literally means "Stomach is empty". My mother tongue is Telugu we have two words to describe this, and one of them is "stomach is empty".

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

    Italian and French use the same grammar as Spanish for that expression ("j'ai faim" in French for example). Interestingly, Romanian, which is often the odd one out among Romance languages with its rather unusual grammar, does not use that form and instead says "mi-e foame" (a shortening of "îmi este foame"), which could be translated literally word for word as "to me is hunger", a rather odd dative-reflexive grammatical construct for a Romance language but actually not that strange if you know German or Russian.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Interesting. I didn't know Romanian worked like this.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    Romanian has a very interesting and unique (some might say these words are euphemisms for complex and difficult) grammar for a Romance language. As a native speaker i never appreciated this until my spouse started trying to learn it. It also put my own attempts with languages with equally or even more complex grammar such as Russian into perspective.

    One of the many reasons why learning other languages is so rewarding, it teaches you a lot, even about your own.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    You are a native Romanian speaker? That's cool as hell.

    Also, yeah. learning languages is one of the most rewarding things someone can do. Especially ones that are completely different.

    I learned Sign language in the past. To say something like "when do we go to the store?" you really need to think about the space, facial expressions, the Deaf culture etc.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago

    You are a native Romanian speaker?

    Yes. My goal currently is to speak at least five languages fluently. I'm at around 3.75 right now, lol.

    I've never thought too much about sign language though. That is fascinating.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago*

    "Estoy con hambre" is a valid way to say that you're hungry in Spanish too btw. It's an unusual way to phrase it but it's totally fine.

    Come to think of it, it's interesting that in English you say that you ARE hungry whereas in Spanish you say that you HAVE hunger. I guess hungriness is an innate characteristic for gringos but merely a status effect for hispanics.

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